The Bald and the Beautiful with Trixie and Katya - The Eminently Effervescent Courtney Act (Part 1) with Katya

Episode Date: August 22, 2023

Katya welcomes the ever-so-engaging Courtney Act to the pod for part 1 of a lengthy conversation about the beauty of braces, the positivity of pool-dancing, and the innate silliness of the gender binary. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at https://www.Betterhelp.com/BALD and get on your way to being your best self! Get Factor and enjoy eating well without the hassle! Head to https://www.FactorMeals.com/BALD50 and use code BALD50 to get 50% off! Start shopping at https://www.Rakuten.com or get the Rakuten app to start saving today, your Cash Back really adds up! Follow Trixie: @TrixieMattel Follow Katya: @Katya_Zamo To watch the podcast on YouTube: http://bit.ly/TrixieKatyaYT Don’t forget to follow the podcast for free wherever you're listening or by using this link: http://bit.ly/baldandthebeautifulpodcast If you want to support the show, and get all the episodes ad-free go to https://thebaldandthebeautiful.supercast.com If you like the show, telling a friend about it would be amazing! You can text, email, Tweet, or send this link to a friend: http://bit.ly/baldandthebeautifulpodcast To check out future Live Podcast Shows, go to: https://trixieandkatya.com To order your copy of our latest book, "Working Girls", go to: workinggirlsbook.com To check out the Trixie Motel in Palm Springs, CA: https://www.trixiemotel.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How do stop losses work on Kraken? Let's say I have a birthday party on Wednesday night, but an important meeting Thursday morning. So, sensible me pre-books a taxi for 10pm with alerts. Voila! I won't be getting carried away and staying out till 2. That's stop loss orders on Kraken. An easy way to plan ahead. Go to Kraken.com and see what crypto can be. Not investment advice. Crypto trading involves risk of loss. See Kraken.com slash legal slash CA dash PRU dash disclaimer

for info on Kraken's undertaking to register in Canada. I'm going back to university for $0 delivery fee, up to 5% off orders and 5% Uber cash back on rides. Not whatever you think university is for. Get Uber One for students. With deals this good, everyone wants to be a student. Join for just $4.99 a month. Savings may vary.

Eligibility and member terms apply. Looking for a collaborator for your career? A strong ally to support your next level success? You will find it at York University School of Continuing Studies, where we offer career programs purpose-built for you. Visit continue.yorku.ca. Hi there, and welcome back to another riveting episode of The Bald and the Beautiful. Do I have to shave my head? No, no, because listen, for the first time in B&B herstory, bald and beautiful.

Thank you. Yeah. Not just two bald uglies. Well, I am bald from here down. No, no, no, no, no. This is, we're just talking about this. This is the head bald. I would like to direct your attention to the full, gorgeous, luscious, healthy head of hair.

Did you go to Turkey by chance? Are you sensitive about that? Do I look like a Barbie doll? Wait, have you gone on TikTok and typed in turkey teeth? Oh boy. I can see the hours melting away from my life already. People who have gone to Turkey to get veneers. But like, it's not pretty. It's not cute.

They're horse teeth, giant giant teeth giant or like they they like file them down and sometimes there's like dentists who are like this is not what you do where they like file down each tooth to a peg and then they put like the veneers over the top and i thank god jesus whatever allah who you know bob no one no one yeah that like i just for some reason the teeth were not a problem for me and i had braces because i had those veneers there's something evil i had orthodontics did you have orthodontics like i had headgear it was like a jock strap and like a bull bar out the front i didn't wear the headgear because i thought it was a little too yeah we know we We can tell.

But I didn't want to take my braces off. Oh, because you love them? Oh, I love them. I couldn't wait to get them on. And I couldn't wait. I didn't want to take them off. It was the 90s with a status symbol. It was a rite of passage.

Yeah. It was like, this is what you do at this. I was the right place at the right time. Like such a sense of like comfort and conformity and belonging. Yes. It was like you get your driver's license at 16 you get your braces at 12 yeah and from 12 to whatever or whatever i was just like oh and they would tighten them at the though and they would hurt did you ever did you have mine

was like old school orthodontics no mine was like wire yeah you'd like the metal metal and then they'd be like the spiky bits and it would stab the inside of your mouth oh absolutely and then they would attach elastics from the bottom the top to the bottom and then sometimes they would snap in your mouth oh thrilling gen z doesn't know what they're missing with their invisalign wait is that what they're doing yeah they don't do they do i've seen people with they do metal braces well do you know what my kind of it's a semi kink adults with braces do you know what my kind of it's a semi kink adults with braces do you know what i mean i know what you mean well my aunt who i'm not that's not my kink she got braces as an adult and um and i just thought that was the coolest thing ever

like like actual 35 years old braces yeah like metal braces metal the whole thing how would you feel about an adult getting like the colored elastics on their teeth? Is it a little infantile? That is totally twee. Yeah. They might as well be wearing a diaper. Yeah. You know what I mean?

But just a mouthful of silver is kind of hot. I think it's so hot, especially if they have like gray hair. Yeah. In like a job. You know what you want to do? You want to find the person who's got kind of janky teeth who's about to get braces and like that's where you marry on the bottom floor okay and it's a good three-year marriage good three years well no no you got to wait until the braces are off and then you get to enjoy the glory years

no no once the braces come off it's a wrap the appeal's gone but then they've got a lovely like well then they move on to another person someone who has a fetish for nice teeth. Well, I imagine if you had a fetish for the infirm. And then they got firm? And then you're like, sorry. Yes. It's a transitional, like you have a series of wonderful transitional relationships. Like I love, I'm only attracted to guys with broken legs.

It's a temporary. It's hot for three months. You hang out at the hospital. so you were from i was just in australia yes you're here yes what the fuck is up with that so we have planes now it's the way the world works in the night we i always i don't like how somehow our schedules i mean our schedules are aligning right now because you have one and i don't that's the weird schedule yeah yeah you do i like fart around every once in have one and I don't. That's the weird thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you do?

I like fart around every once in a while, but I don't really travel much anymore. I don't travel much anymore and I like it. I mean, I've just been traveling for the last six weeks, but that's been for enjoyment. Traveling for enjoyment is not sullied by the traveling. I tell you, it does take a minute to get over it. The whole lead up to this trip, I was feeling that like, oh God, like airports and bags and like, especially going to the UK, like suitcases, hallways, corners, no elevators. And you have one going through TSA anywhere in the UK.

Oh, right. This one milliliter of mouthwash is going to blow up the whole plane. Definitely detain me for 15 minutes. It's like crazy yeah but i did have all of that sort of like pre-trip anxiety of i mean it wasn't crippling it wasn't like oh but yeah i did think oh am i doing this for enjoyment then i got to lisbon i was in lisbon for a week with my friends alex and ronnie and we just had like a lovely time then i went to the uk for like a week to do a bunch of gigs and some meetings.

Then I went to Berlin, which I was performing at Pride, but that was like the fun. I have a mixed relationship with it. It often feels like the world ended and we had to reassemble society based on what we had laying around like east berlin is like that okay but i've been there like five times and every time i'm like this

is the time like berlin is so cool it's so edgy i'm so cool and so edgy obviously i'm gonna fall in love with berlin berlin's gonna fall in love with me. And then it was the Sunday after Pride. I woke up and I was like, you know what? Maybe Berlin's just not for me. And I thought, I'm going to go see the Barbie movie and get a burger. And I walked to the cinema. I asked the lady for the ticket. The next movie wasn't for three hours.

And I was like, I'll go to another cinema. And a friend from Australia who was in Berlin texted and said, we're going to Horsemeat Disco. You should come. And I was like I'll go to another cinema and a friend from Australia who was in Berlin texted and said we're going to horse meat disco you should come and I was like horse meat all right and I went and had the night of my life oh you did I love Berlin oh she fell in love with Berlin that's great I've had fun times there but it's more like is that that at Berghain no no this was uh I think it's called Prince Charles but horse meat disco is such a good party it happens in like new york and la as well i think yeah they play disco like they play like donna sondana ross there's a very like maybe one of the gayest moments of my life is when they're playing uh it's raining men okay and we were in like the

dance floor is like it used to be a pool and so like everyone's on the dance floor which is the bottom of the pool i'm dancing and it's raining men starts and at first i'm like oh this is this is i've always found it's raining men a bit on the nose it's like what straight people play when they want right it's like the ymca yeah like really but in a in a very queer space it felt like like i was able to like heal those wounds and dance it out get over your velvet rage yeah but i would prefer that to rain on me the current you know what i mean because that's it's controversial hang on where padam padam are you okay with that am i okay with it okay well you just poo-pooed right on me, so I had to check about Padang. Well, listen.

Kylie Minogue is an untouchable, delightful angel sent straight from heaven. And she will do nothing. It's music to my Australian ears. Except caress and cajole and inspire. And lift up. I love her so much. She could sing anything.

She could sing like, I fucked my husband even though he was dead. You know, like whatever. And I would be like, yes, Kylie, you're really doing it. I love that despite being like one of the greatest,

most successful pop stars in the world, there's still something of like an underdog feel. Yeah, because she never- I think in the US. Yeah, she never really, but I listened to it. I watched an interview with her a little while ago, you know, and the rude interviewer was kind of alluding

to that fact that she never really made it in the US. And she was like, yeah, well, you know, touring the US is kind of, well, awful. And I was like, geez. It's like's like oh you never hit a big here so you don't you you don't get the pleasure of going to arkansas um tennessee mobile oh yeah it's like uh selena kansas oh no kylie what are you gonna do a vegas residency yeah oh my gosh um so it was like yeah who fucking cares plus it's like so wonderful to see somebody like you know she's what

in her 50s 55 I think in her 17th album I recall being at her 50th birthday that's right you do you have

she's five foot tall right yeah teeny tiny teeny yeah teeny tiny perfectly proportioned in every way what do you think about her

jacking my whole swag for the music video I thought that was a little ballsy I did see those memes. People were like, this is just Katya. Yeah.

My friend was like, so I loved it. I loved your new music video. And I was like, I mean, it's not like I did invent the color red. You did. Yeah.

But I love it. She's she's definitely featuring a facelift of some sort, you know, she's a woman of certain age who knows. And it's, it's working. Yeah. It's working.

And it's just like, she's got that coffee cup certain age who knows. And it's, it's working. Yeah. It's working. And it's just like, she's got that coffee cup. Doesn't mean anything. It's like sliding a coffee cup around in a diner. Yeah. Americana. Is that what it is?

I think so. I think I see that music video is like nodding to like a, like a relatable budgeted Americana kind of like we're in a diner. Now we're in a car. Yeah. Yeah. And then we're in of like, we're in a diner. Now we're in a car. Yeah. Yeah. And then we're in a hotel. We're in a hotel. They're all very like American tropes, like a motel.

A motel. It was a motel. Definitely was a motel. Yeah. It's all red. Yeah. I love it. Rain on me, horse meat disco, Berlin.

So you fell in love. Do you want to see how far back I can go? Yeah, you got it. Berlin, traveling. How'd you feel about traveling? Here we are together. You you fell in love. Do you want to see how far back I can go? Yeah, you got it. Berlin, traveling. How'd you feel about traveling? Here we are together. You were just in Australia. I'm here.

Why weren't we there? Jesus Christ. Do we want to pick up on any of those trends or just keep spiraling? No, I think we want to go. Well, so you fell in love in Berlin. It's concentric circles, I think, conversation. I think so.

It's not a straight line. No, mama. Time is a flat circle. Yeah. No, not concentric. What do you call it when it spirals? A spiral? Spiraling?

Yeah. What does possible sound like for your business? It's having the spend to power your scale with no preset spending limit. Redefine possible with Business Platinum. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Terms and conditions apply. Visit amex.ca slash business platinum. Turn off hesitation.

Turn off doubt. Turn off fears. The YMCA of Greater Toronto helps you turn off whatever's holding you back so you can let your potential shine. Turn on confidence. Turn on connections. Turn on possibilities. There are hundreds of programs and services available at the Y. See what you can achieve at ymcagta.org.

This will be the day. Berlin, you finally fell in love with Berlin. Yes, but I feel like the reason that I fell in love with Berlin was so superficial. It's because like I was making out with a hot boy all night on the dance floor. Like I fell in love and like had great time. You're gay. Well, I moved to Bondi. Well, he moved to Bondi.

Well, I moved to Berlin. Oh, God. And then something happened during the night and like it was over. And I was like, it's okay. Pick yourself up, girl. Go find someone else. There's plenty of men at this party. And I did.

And then I left. And now I feel like I have, like, I planted all of these seeds. Okay. And now I need to go back to Germany. Yeah, you have to get to go reap. Yeah, I got to go reap what I sowed. Halari. Halari.

Oh, if you say R-N-R in an American accent, like I do it now, like as a- R-N-R. Did you hear it? Say it again. R-N-R. R-N-R. That was like rise up lights.

Rise up lights. Rise up lights. Like razor blades, rise up lights. I think that is so cool. R-N-R. R-N-R. I've i've showed you that video of my friend katie who's like welcome to bingar if you hear it to me it's bad but it's so it's the funniest thing ever it's like um if uh if you hear for bingar stay you're in the right play oh god

but is it like, is it, have you been following the Drag Race Down Under show at all? I started watching the first episode and I unfortunately was unable to complete watching it. That's a very diplomatic answer. For certain, for reasons beyond my control, I was not able to complete the series.

Thank you so much and have a wonderful day. I won't tell you what the reasons were my control, I was not able to complete the series. Thank you so much and have a wonderful day. I won't tell you what the reasons were. Have you put it on? I'm hitting a wall with Drag Race. We've reached saturation point. Oh, I think we've reached it a while ago. Once it started becoming like, and I'm not complaining. No.

I'm not complaining. Listen, I think it's great that we have McDonald's in Africa, in Asia, in everywhere. and everywhere you know how do they feel about it though i don't know i don't know we have to ask them but we never will no but like i just can't keep up with it all and i feel bad because i go in these gigs and like i meet these queens who are like on this on the show or maybe like really and i'm like i don't know who you are and I'm sorry. It's fascinating. Examine the, examining the psychology between the like social structures and the, the,

the parasocial structures of like drag race interconnectedness of like the franchise and the sisterhood and the. It's like the, it's a sisterhood of the traveling franchises. Yeah. It's very strange. Yeah. Same.

I'm grateful that like Iceland and Brazil and Belgium and all this, It's like it's a sisterhood of the traveling franchises. Yeah. Yeah. It's very strange. Yeah. Same. I'm grateful that like Iceland and Brazil and Belgium. Is there Iceland? I think so. Is there Angola? There's probably Drag Race Trinidad in Tobago. I mean, it's probably coming down. Wow.

But I love that all of those regions have an opportunity for the queens in their regions. Sure. Like, I'm just I'm just glad I was on season six of the US one. Seriously, Mary? I think like, I'm so grateful because I think that your season six was the end. And then seven was like, you know when the monster like lurches up for one last little like thing at the end of the horror movie?

That was seven. And then eight was just, I don't even know, from eight on. Yeah. And because it was like, I think Bianca killed Drag Race. It was sort of like, when you're at the top, where else are you going to go? Down. Yeah.

That's what season seven was like. You know, you grease up one of those metal slides and take it down the ski hill. Whee! Yeah. No, but it was like a reset i i i remember did you watch season seven yeah you did i've watched them all everyone i've watched all the american ones and all of the whole stuff 15 yes wow yeah alaska and willem don't believe that i've ever watched drag race in my life but i i really have okay um but i was reading a book i think it was popism

i don't know if it was by andy warhol or if it was about a book. I think it was Popism. I don't know if it was by Andy Warhol or if it was about Andy Warhol. But it was about that era of like Andy Warhol and the factory and New York and the 90s and the 80s, 70s. 70s. Anyway, whenever it was, I really paid attention. And I remember reading it thinking, I wonder when like the next like great sort of queer artistic era will be. And then I was like, oh, maybe we're actually in the middle of it. Yeah. Like drag race and the proliferation of drag globally.

Like we can remember what it was like. Well, this is just a few years ago, but I guess 16 years ago. Yeah. No shit. Yeah. Fuck. like well this is like just a few years ago but i guess 16 years ago yeah no shit yeah fuck i moved to la in 2010 and i think maybe season three hadn't gone to air yet but we all knew raja had won right and um it was like this like new yeah because by season three it, it was getting somewhere. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And have I told you about when Ru sent me an email? So it was like 2009. I was doing beauty advertorials on Australian morning television

for sheer cover mineral makeup. Of course you were. We're not wearing nothing. Wearing nothing. It was called sheer cover. A pussycat wig. Oh, my God. And I had like a bunch of, and this is like a pre,

essentially a pre-Drake Rice era, like season two. And so I sent, I sent, I had RuPaul's, why did I have RuPaul? RuPaul's email used to be on like RuPaul.com back in the year 2003. And it was like RuPaul at RuPaul.al.com back in the year 2003 and it was like rupal at rupal.com and i hacked the mainframe and so i sent an email to that address and then ru replied now it was on an oh it was like an old hotmail account so i don't have this email anymore so i can only like

let me guess you listen up you honky bitch well what i realized i never realized at the time it was written in australian because you know how she loves oh she loved oh my god she loves to uh dip into her toes into the local flavor yeah basically it's like like hello yeah and that's it yeah and so what did she say it was like it was like g'day Courtney I think you're the bee's knees um I'm real keen for you to blah blah blah and she said I love what you're doing like she she knew who I was I think maybe from Idol and she said that I love what you're doing and she said I've I've just I've just started doing this uh show called Drag Race and if it's successful, it will give me the cache I need to be able to start like a,

she wanted to do like a drag band, like a live singing drag band. I swear I'm not making this up, but as I'm saying it, it sounds so unbelievable. I think they're gonna be like, I'm fracking Empire in Wyoming now. That can't be true. And she said she wanted to start a drag band and it was like,

and of course you would be the lead singer. I swear to God this is what she said. I need to like contact someone at Hotmail. Who owns Hotmail now? Microsoft? Apple. Apple? Do they?

Microsoft. Okay. Somebody get. Yes. Mike at Microsoft, please. Would you get right on that? Thank you. Yeah, and I had forgotten about that.

This is tea. Right, this is tea. This is actually like... And it was this lovely email and it was just like... So it was also like one of those, you know, Rue is an icon. Did she sign it Love Rue or like Ruth Paul? That's so fierce. what was the band name uh that we didn't get into that i can't remember if it was like a she wanted to do a show to create a band maybe it was like another like like live singing drag band show kind of thing i think she i mean she uh we we paul i think was

one of the name of her bands. Yeah. Yeah. Damn. I remember you from, I became aware of you way before Drag Race from MySpace. Oh, MySpace. And I was like, that. Was I MySpace famous?

I, absolutely. And I never knew. You must have been. Me and Jeffree Star. In Miss Fame. Oh, Miss Fame.

Yes, because she was famous before the show with her YouTube. is she old enough to be on MySpace? She's, yes, she's old enough to be on MySpace. Hey Siri, how old is Miss Fame? I would say she's 40 years old. Miss Fame is 38 years old. Close enough.

Yeah, yeah. YouTube or whatever. Yeah, but I was like, I remember thinking like, oh, I didn't want to go to LA. I wanted to move to New York. But I was like, oh oh this girl in la she's really really pretty what's her deal and i remember thinking i was like oh she's gonna be such a bitch she's gonna be such a bitch and look you're just like a delightful way of sunshine

no no no you oh thank you i mean well when i when i first moved to la willem had like heard about me from like raya and the other girls and had had and and was threatened i was gonna say was there was there like mean girl friction she asked me when detox went away to film drag race which we called summer camp yeah yeah uh she asked me to fill in for a DWV gig at Wet in Chicago. Oh, God. And on one condition, that I had to wear brown hair. And a mustache. And be from behind the curtain.

You're kidding me. I had a Courtney in chocolate star, is it called? Oh my God. With the thing pinned back. And it was me, Vicky, and Willam, me in a brown wig. Listen, you are one of the most gorgeous drag queens in the world. However, a brunette, you are not. Well, we don't know.

Well, I think we know. I feel like I want to like, I feel like I'd do a redhead era before I did a brunette era. Or black even. Jet black. But brown. Brown. I did wear brown hair once in like the year 2001. It was the most boring night of my life.

And you also framed Drescher for the Snatch Game. That was a brunette moment. Yeah. But it's just like, it's a head scratcher for me a lot of times. Yeah. Why? Are we playing a character?

Are we trying to do the princess, the princess diaries where we're like, we're ugly because we have glasses on and then we take the glasses off. Are we being brunette phobic? No, not at all. Because Alyssa Edwards, for example, natural brunette. Yeah. Beautiful. Roxy Andrews, brunette.

Yeah. You know. It works for some people. For me, I look like a dog. Like a dog. If I have brown hair hair it's just so strange like a dog you're a blonde or yeah just a blonde have you done a red have you done red i've done black um i've done it all but brown is the real if i'm wearing a brown wig you should call the

police oh okay you know it's like it's not good um so wait you moved here they did you wear the brown wig on stage you did what would it look like uh fine actually there's a video on youtube of the three of us because the keep finished late and the flight was early and we decided it would be a great idea to fly in drag and so vicky willem and i going through tsa oh my god and then and it was also a connecting flight what so we like got out of drag on the plane and got off in i don't know atlanta or wherever the connection was through but so they let you they look at your id and then see this thing and they're like okay they like scanned us i i think they like patted down willem's hair like sorry check the rise of so ma'am yeah um and what year is this 2010 11 i'd say i don't

have anything new about trans people yet no they didn't jesus christ damn it was a simpler time and then they just let you go through no problem yeah and we got on the plane and got out of drag on the plane in economy like in the chair like trying to like take off makeup and like go to the bathroom on the plane to like rinse and it worked you fully de-dragged on the yeah do people hate you no i think it was like it was like a long flight at night and the lights were off and okay like we weren't being like oh you weren't being like surprisingly you weren't doing there's a stranger what makes a man a man if i if i was on a plane especially like a business class overnight and there was a drag show i would kill myself i would kill myself you just wait for that emergency hat

and we're all going down this is a bridge to first libraries with children, now airplanes. Oh, God. In Australia, I noticed that there were some protests at the Drag Expo that we did. But they had a huge police presence just as a as a precaution like a barricade and i don't even know what happened with the protests like you know people protesting the fact that they think drag queens are groomers and all that yeah which of course we are but like very well groomed um but by and large isn't australia like or at least melbourne and sydney like very gay yeah it's really interesting because the conversation around drag and grooming,

and I think that also like then extends to like trans people and sport and bathrooms and whatever else. It's all in Australia. It's all, I think, spoken with an American accent. What do you mean by that? It's sort of something that's been imported from the US. And it's not, I think australians even like our conservative um like fox news it's called sky news what's it called sky news when i so um i was on a tv show called play school story time which is like a kids like an institution play

school and they have story time which is like a spin-off where somebody reads a book and they have lots of different people reading a lovely book to children and it's the abc it's like um publicly funded like very considered there's nothing like salacious huge opportunity for grooming well i read this lovely book yeah uh on and this was sort of before the drag queen story time uh thing had really kicked off. And I had been on the previous year. It was like a show called Little Kids Big Questions where they had like a First Nations person and like a bunch of kids asking like questions about First Nations culture or a person in a wheelchair and them talking about their experience and different like just different facets of society having conversations with kids and i did one that was like i had millions of views it was so well received it was so adorable no one ever said anything but then a year later and this sort of thing started to spark off and i was at a 10-day silent vipassana meditation retreat in the blue mountains grooming when when a senator held up a like laser jet printer of me and asked uh why is the abc using

government money to groom children and in the senate estimates there's a um like a privilege that exists where they can say slanderous things or defamatory things with privilege and it's fine. Okay. But even like the Sky News, like the Fox News of Australia was like, what is this guy talking about? Like, this is ridiculous. We all need to move on.

And I was just like, oh my God. Like, cause I saw the thing and I was like them talking about it and I watched it and I was like oh oh yeah he's like this was a lovely show Courtney read this book that was completely appropriate it was very sweet I'd be happy if my kids watched it sort of thing and I was like ah are you telling me that there's evolved conservative news outlets out there like it or then there's the exhibit evolved behavior at certain times. At certain times on certain subjects. I mean, honestly, like, Mama, who gives a shit?

Also, the bathroom thing. Marry the bat. Leave it alone. Well, they they just what they've been trying. They've been poking around trying to find what works for a while. And they finally worked out drag queens in storytime and sport trans people in sport they're like oh here's where we can like really divide yeah the nation the sport thing really gets tough because people are so I mean sports is such a huge industry yeah and it's so serious yeah I mean you ever

watch like American football games where the coaches are on the sidelines with their they have like veins bulging, they're screaming and like they look like they're about to have an aneurysm. It's like so serious. And I'm like. But they've worked out that there's these few issues that will polarize us and there aren't easy answers and they are difficult conversations.

And in order, the thing about those polarizing conversations is that they reduce it to just two sides. So everything on the other side is wrong. And so having the ability to be able to hold more than one truth in your head at one time is what's required. And so when we're focused on what we disagree on, we're forgetting everything that we actually do agree on. And so I'm always interested, like, I think the people at the top probably know exactly what they're doing and that they're using these wedge issues to divide people. But then the people are like, yeah, that's right. And they haven't really thought about it.

But then I wanna know, like, if we could just take, say, sport, story time, bathrooms, off the table, and say like, well, what do we agree on? Do we agree that, you know, trans people exist? Do we agree that people express agree agree on do we agree that you know trans people exist do we agree that people express gender differently do we agree that they should be allowed to yeah and like try and work on like the the complementarity of is that a real word it is a real word it's the opposite of polarization it's this idea that like the the opposite of polarization are the things that complement each other that we agree on. And I just think like, we need to get back to that.

Like we need to start talking about, well, what do we agree on? Because most like marriage equality, it passed, the sky didn't cave in. Most people are down with the gays. Y2K happened. That didn't, I mean, I remember that. I remember that.

Mom bought water and canned food. I was waiting for like, I don't even know what. But yeah, no shit. Also, like, I mean, I think it's, it must be just a distraction from the fact that like, you know, in America we have no health care. You know, there's, you can't, the cost of living is so sky high and then billionaires don't pay taxes, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Climate change, reproductive rights. the cost of living is so sky high and then billionaires don't pay taxes, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's fucking- Climate change, reproductive rights. Well, that's the thing.

Also like, are you a boy or a girl? Yeah. You're like, there was a clip of one of these conservative pundit women talking about the trans activist Dylan Mulvaney. He's like, she's not a girl, she doesn't have boobs. It's like, this is a girl she doesn't have boobs it's like it's just like this is like schoolyard yeah like the level of um discourse is like on the maybe second third grade

recess yeah level it's like what are you talking about she doesn't have a rack on her how could she be a girl this is crazy it's like oh my god and i think that's in a weird way why queer people are here to save the world because we're here to disassemble the binary system and conversation around gender. Let me ask you this, though. So the gender binary. Speak. Yeah. Are you for or against?

I think that there's like obviously biological realities. And I think that there is then sociological realities, which is that gender exists in many ways. Like I always think if I could like talk to like this, the straight conservative man and be like, yes, sir, we both have penises. But do you really think that like we're the same? Because I'm sure in your mind you see me as less

than you don't see me as masculine or a man you see me as like some pathetic and like let's go with that let's take that and extrapolate that because you see right there that gender is on a spectrum because you're more masculine and i'm not like if we were in the cave people times i wouldn't be out killing the lions i'd be picking berries with the women like we would be it would be a meritocracy yeah no you'd be doing like um silk trapeze or something like that or like i'd be like the medicine the modeling you wouldn't be swimming swimming modeling i think like if you think about if you look around the world right i mean i know is like, it was like flogging a dead horse's conversation, but I try to think of like other ways to talk to conservative people, like to help them prove what they're saying is true in service of our experience.

And so I'm like, yeah, where, like you're this big masculine man. I'm not. Yeah. So therefore we have a spectrum yeah so let's like expand that out let's plot the manliest man to the most i guess feminine man if we had to choose a word and the most feminine woman and to the most masculine woman and i feel like that's a venn diagram that actually crosses over it's not like i feel like the most feminine man is more feminine than most masculine woman okay but also of course it depends on to a degree the arbitrary nature of how we characterize masculine absolutely she doesn't

have a rack yeah yeah wear her fucking tits yeah you know like just because she's got double g's doesn't mean you know she might be uh out there changing attire yeah with a buzz cut yeah exactly it's just so reductive the whole conversation about what we and that's why i think like um all of this uh queer identity is disrupting what people have always afforded to be true and i think we're now just unfortunately suffering the fallout but i think that it's almost like a puberty like you know trans people go through like a second puberty i think the conversation around gender right now probably aided by social media and populist politics it's like one big puberty like the hormones are raging and we're all just like in the schoolyard saying

yeah dumb things and i i hope my hope is that in five or ten years we will have progressed to a place where maybe 10 15 15 years, where society looks back and goes, oh, wow, queer people, there was something so feminist about trans and queer identity. And it really helped to not take away from what a woman is, but take away the expectation of how someone who has a vagina is supposed to behave and dress and act and eat and wear and all of that and for men i think men on the other side are actually uh sometimes it sounds like oh poor straight white men no men have problems too no but i think they're actually the ones who are suffering the not the most but they have a burden they have a burden they have a burden they created it they created the cage created it. They created the cage. They inherited it. The system created the cage.

They're not personally aware of the cage. And I think that working to disassemble that for them weirdly is, I think it's like my kink. And I think I've discovered that through having sex with like straight identifying men in drag and then psychoanalyzing them after they come. I did the same thing too. If they were available for that, because sometimes they come come and they just and then they punch you in the back of the head and leave i had one vomit once that's some crying game shit i know i was why i don't know it was like it was 2001 so you were in a brown wig it could have been my fault. I didn't have my glasses on. I didn't have my glasses on.

I had wispies on at best. Oh, God. Fuck. And I was the top. Of course. And he came and then he looked at me, looked in the mirror. We were in the bathroom and he was over the bathroom sink. And then he just looked and he got that look in his eye.

And I was like, is he going to punch me? Oh, no. And then just vomited everywhere. And I sort of snuck out of the room, put on a little more lip liner and came back into the room and he's a he started to he tried to kiss me. And I was like, did you brush your teeth? Okay. Did you gargle? This is such a man.

This is such a man. Such a man. Such a man. Indulge my wildest taboo, then get so sick and by it that I throw up, then get over that and then take my vomity lips and try to kiss no no no no um but you know i think by the time that we have all this gender stuff kind of ironed out and smooth over climate change will be like yeah y'all done yeah i mean so glad that y'all figured out men women and everything in between here's this fucking tidal wave and you're all gonna drown it does feel like uh like uh like a right hand don't look at what the left hand's doing kind of thing or i think maybe were you the one who gave me the

hand pointing at the moon i didn't give you that i probably told you about it because i have used that and i realized that you have to explain it told you about it because i have used that and i realized that you have to explain it whenever you say it because i thought it was like a a philosophy or an eth i've not been like yeah but when i say to people you know drag is like the hand pointing at the moon and they're like i'm like but most people instead of looking at where the finger is pointing they just are looking at the hand and going like, wow, what a pretty hand in a wig. And you're like, no, no, I'm pointing at something. Look at that.

Yeah, yeah. And I think that, yeah, I think that that's the power of drag. And that's why I do think that like, I think that where we've been, I think that like Black Lives Matter, Me Too, Queer Liberation are all really important movements that have been created to uplift uh people who have been oppressed by the patriarchy but we haven't addressed the the source which is like the i mean we try to we try to disassemble

the patriarchy but um and i think that like if if we, if we try in a weird way to like, like get talk to men. Do you think, can you envision a world in which like, I mean, I'm thinking like it would be like a civil war, Russian revolution type of scale. Yeah. But I don't, I mean, you look at all these, in America anyways, I don't know about Australia, it's like Congress, you know, companies, CEOs, it's all men. Yeah.

Pilots, all men. It is a patriarchy. It's all men, men, men, men. How do you practically dismantle that? Bobbyland. No. That's right. We've got to get Greta Gerwig on the case.

Did you like Barbie? I did. I did. You did. I really enjoyed it. Okay. That's right. We're going to get Greta Gerwig on the case. Did you like Barbie? I did. I did. You did. I really enjoyed it. What about that Ken number? A little too long for me. A little too long.

Yeah. We all agree on that. And that is the conclusion of part one of my positively lovely and certainly scintillating conversation with Courtney. Tune in next week

for part two which promises to be even more sparkling, more interesting, and effervescent. Thank you so much. Goodbye.